We get paid back for coupons. There isn't anything that ties a coupon to a specific transaction. It is in our best interest to take all coupons to keep lines moving and make guests happy and maintain their loyalty. At the end of the day even if you have several extreme couponers in your store you are talking about an incredibly small percentage of your sales. Just take the coupons and smile Target doesn't feel it.
Actually if we take 100 coupons for something that we didn't even sell, the manufacturer could red-flag those coupons, and not payout since they were improperly used. This is info I received from when I used to do cash office.
Coupons should be enforced to proper use, selling 50 electric toothbrush heads (seemed like the coupon scammers LOVED these...) to the coupon guy with all those coupons means that is 50 less toothbrush heads for other people to buy. Also most likely 50 more items of reshop for Target when they inevitably return them.
My general rule as a GSA (and what I told cashiers), is if the number of coupons seems reasonable compared to the number of items they were buying, and if the coupons were for smaller amounts, to just push them all through and don't check. Only to carefully scrutinize when they have a LOT of coupons, and it seems like they have one for every item, and/or they are higher $ coupon amounts.